Childcare: an inconvenient truth

Wyndham Lewis once said that ‘the ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season’ – but that, of course, is not how they are seen by liberals today. They are regarded immutable, inviolable, permanent and not up for argument. This is especially the case when they are demonstrably counter-factual, such as in the claims that a rapist is a woman, or when they are truly stupid – such as it being OK for a black actor to play a white role but not for a white actor to play a black role. These are not simply the ‘clothes of a season’, we are told, but the inevitable consequence of Progress, and there will be no going back from them. 

State-provisioned childcare is one such consequence of liberal ‘progress’. You will never hear anyone argue against it. They may say that we can’t afford to pay for it, but they never question the aspiration – the desirability of everybody to enjoy free or cheap childcare.